India's Supreme Court on May 1o  allowed an octogenarian Pakistani doctor, recently released on bail after serving 14 months in prison for murder, to visit Pakistan.

Virologist Khalil Chishti, 80, who is in poor health and cannot walk unaided, was granted bail a day after President Asif Ali Zardari's visit to India in April.

The Supreme Court permitted the visit on humanitarian grounds, but Chishti was ordered to return to India to attend his next court hearing on November 20.

He was convicted in January 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment, for allegedly killing a man in the northern town of Ajmer in 1992.
The trial lasted 18 years, during which he was placed under house arrest.

Chishti has challenged a court order upholding his conviction.

Chishti's case has received widespread media attention in India and Pakistan, with human rights activists demanding that he be allowed to return to his family in Karachi.